


Boxes, Boxes, Numbers, Numbers

by chokechickadee



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Arospec Rat, Autistic Rat, Back into regular tags, Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Gore and Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Now into the content warnings!, Para-social Relationships, Queer Themes, Scars, Self-Harm, Tell me if I missed anything, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chokechickadee/pseuds/chokechickadee
Summary: A study of Rat through the lens of his scars and the people he's hyperfixated on. Title from First Year by Empty Disco. Heed the tags, I'm begging you.
Relationships: Rat (Archive 81) & Original Characters, Rat (Archive 81) & Samuel (Archive 81)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Boxes, Boxes, Numbers, Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the A81 fan discord for the encouragement and edits!

Rat’s hands are calloused and scar covered. He never really saw the point in wearing gloves while he worked, so much of what he does relies on what he can feel and furthermore what he can  _ feel _ and gloves just get in the way. Many a time he’d reached into a body with an open wound on a finger, sometimes on purpose, other times not. He never minds it. It is a sacrifice he is eager to freely give to strengthen his projects. On each of his hands are cuts where a heart line must have once been. Blood from anywhere was blood, but he finds the tradition of bleeding from there fascinating. Why people gave it such significance, he’d never know, but it felt right, so he took part, almost a personal joke.

His wrists are layered by scars, wrapped in lightened lines like gauntlets. Rat had never been kind to himself. The way he spoke, his strange and intense interests, the every shape of his flesh. They were all reasons he pulled his blade down upon himself at every opportunity. It would be a while before he learned how to use his knives to make himself more pleasing, but punishment for who he was sufficed for the moment. Those scars ran up his arms and across his stomach and around his thighs like serpents, hissing to him all the reasons he could never belong in the world he was made in. Those scars ran through him just like veins.

The way his thighs sat against the mattress in the basement bedroom of his first boyfriend. He had told Rat about a new sort of life, the one he held inside his head. People understood him there, but not everyone was nice. It was a world where he didn’t have to translate his thoughts from shapes and colors and music without notes into words and letters. Rat wished he could climb inside his skull and never leave there. The boy broke up with him when he said that. Because he would never get it.

He hoped the theatre would offer him a home for the odds and ends that he was. The directors gave him the biggest roles because he was good at being someone else. But he really liked to tip his head back and listen to the people talking and the pauses between their words and their intonations and what made them who they weren’t. That’s where he met the first person who fell in love with him. And pressed against them under a clear sky, they told him about not being a boy or a girl, the things that it changed. Rat couldn’t get enough.

He went to summer camp and met a girl who claimed she could talk to the sky. He wasn’t sure if he believed her, but he liked the Idea all the same. He spent as many moments as he could with her, observing, staring at her face, trying to memorize it. He asked her for stories as often as she could tell them, he didn’t care when the stories wound around themselves and fell apart and went on for too long, he loved them all the same. When she asked him to be her boyfriend, he found it weird for a number of reasons, but he did anything for her. And when the summer ended, he almost tried to keep in touch.

Rat’s back is covered in dark spots and dips where acne once sat. His ribs are slightly warped from prolonged pressure. His chest has messy scars across it, first attempts are hardly pretty. He played those weeks over in his head while he circled his park’s trails at home. “Boyfriend” wasn’t right but it was almost not wrong. He wrapped himself in bandages while his parents pretended to want to understand. He’d never liked his hair long, but he cut it anyway, switched to baggy clothing and asked a few castmates to call him they/them. It still wasn’t right but it was better.

His heart got broken in high school when he began to fixate on one of the football players. Rat sat at the end of the table, eyes barely blinking, enraptured by him. The way he talked was like ice across a hot pan, and he moved like he never had to give it thought. Rat made sure to sit in the best seat in their shared classes to watch him (one desk to the right, a row behind). Then the football player noticed. And for a few days he, in hindsight, tried to avoid Rat. Avoiding Rat was like trying to write better music than a painter, it may be different, but it’s still art. And when the football player confronted him, he kissed him and freaked out and told Rat to go away. Rat began to understand that he was being avoided.

He moved to New York right out of high school, far too ready to leave the whole shit hole behind him. There were so many people in New York City, and so many of them were incredible. He rode subways for entire days just to watch people get on and off. Part of him wanted to go for a sociology degree, but the part that thought about money said no. His student loans and his inability to get and keep a retail job (it’s not his fault the customers find him creepy) already had him living in a rather  _ interesting _ building.

In this building, he met a man named Samuel and immediately the preoccupation set in. When with a smile the man asked for his name, he told him it was Jacob before he could keep the words in his mouth. Samuel called him Jacob and used he/him and it was very close to correct. Samuel spoke of the most beautiful places and things and beings and Rat hung on every word. Samuel was everyone he’d ever obsessed over at once, and better yet, he liked the obsession. When Rat stood slightly behind him on the right everywhere he went, he never said a thing. He didn’t mind when Rat watched him sleep. Was this what love was? 

**Author's Note:**

> First person to guess which character is most based on me wins.


End file.
